General info

The course is taught by Jean van den Elsen, Susan Crennel, Chris Pudney and Julien Licchesi. It covers translation, folding and chaperones, protein dynamics, and post-translation modifications. The content mainly builds on concepts that you have already come across. The coursework is run by Susan, it is about aminoacyl tRNA synthetases. It is split into two parts, one you do in a pair which is focused on data collection and then the second half is an individual essay based on analysing the results and further researching the topic. The parts have separate deadlines, halfway through and at the end of the semester which I liked because it spread out the workload. Susan was really helpful with any questions and ran workshops and drop-in sessions to help with the coursework.

How different is this from the previous protein modules? I feel like every year they cover the same stuff and it's really jarring, what skills does it build // could you provide a vague idea of the content? Thanks !

Some of the content is similar, I think we covered translation in previous modules and the thermodynamics and kinetics content was familiar. The translation has more of a focus on aminoacyl tRNA synthetases in this module, there are a couple of lectures on chaperones, and there is a lot of detail on post-translation modifications - how they are formed, what enzymes are involved etc. The PTMs the course covers are proteolysis, N- and O-linked glycosylation, phosphorylation, acylation, alkylation, and ubiquitination.